If I were Sony, I would start off the conference apologizing for the outage. No jokes. No Kevin Butler. Just a sincere apology, and be sure to mention that hackers who were the ones who were truly responsible. They've got to take the lionshare of the blame and fess up to it, but it's important to mention the hackers just so they can deflect a little of the anger. Maybe even bring out Stringer to do it. At least to Americans, and English accent can go a long way into making something sound genuine.
Then immediately go into a demonstration highlighting "the new PSN" and quickly mentioning the free games, the month long trial of PSN+, and whatever other freebies they're giving out. If they can hold off on making the announcement of what they're doing to make good then they can actually build up interest and excitement which will also go a long way in helping us forget about the outage. But they would really need to follow-thru strong on this. They can't cheap out and offer us a copy of a PSOne Classic Crash Bandicoot and Noby Noby Boy. That's not going to cut it.
From there, they can go on and do the presentation as normal, but they cannot go the old arrogant Sony route. They can't trash their competition in any way or make any kind of disparaging remark. They have to focus soley on the games and the launch of the NGP. That's going to be real hard if they try and throw the 3DS under the bus which we all know they're dying to do.
This is going to haunt Sony for a while, but people are a lot quicker to forgive than a lot of cynics think. I mean, after the RRoD debacle, would any reasonable person say they feel confident about buying an X-Box? And yet, who is the leader in North America right now?
So in a nutshell:
- Apologize
- Show off the freebies
- No arrogance or trash talking
That's pretty good.
It's hard to show off games without some arrogance and bluster though -- so maybe skip that part.
As for Sir Howard Stringer -- it may be effective because the gamingpress never sees him. So if you wheel in this plumb-mouthed walrus to address the crowd it may wow them -- but his personal demeanor is so offensive -- he's so pompous -- it may be hard to find him sincere.
The other option is to have a marine helicopter land through the roof, have Obama jump out of it with some SEALS and say, "Werr going to get those FOLKS" and then have cannons shoot cash out on the stage... cue U2 playing "It's a Beutiful Day" and go-go- dancers with NGPs attached to their waists.
aspro said:That's pretty good.
It's hard to show off games without some arrogance and bluster though -- so maybe skip that part.
That's all fine and good so long as it's in regard specifically to the games. But comments like "the next generation doesn't start till we say so" and "rumble is last generation" are right out the window in this case. Really I think the only place they'll have to watch themselves is with the NGP. We all know there's already a list somewhere in Sony's HQ that explains each and every feature that is better than the 3DS. This list needs to go away.
aspro said:The other option is to have a marine helicopter land through the roof, have Obama jump out of it with some SEALS and say, "Werr going to get those FOLKS" and then have cannons shoot cash out on the stage... cue U2 playing "It's a Beutiful Day" and go-go- dancers with NGPs attached to their waists.
Sure that's worth a shot too. I'd leave out U2 though. No one likes U2 anymore.
Seppaku or bust.
They are going to present the security lapse as an opportunity to make PSN better and they will trumpet their new PSN Plus feature set and give people a free month of it. I don't think they will dwell on it. E3 conferences are like a rock concert, they want to whoop and holler and dazzle.
Robio nailed it, they have to be humble, they need to address what they are doing for us as an apology. Then show of the games but not be all system wars about it. Prove to the people why they should stick with Sony.
Maybe they will even have PSN up????
You guys, honestly unless you are personally ripped off by fraudsters, you honestly wouldn't just dump Sony because of this security lapse would you?
Even if PSN never came back I'd still be getting PS3 games.
Good to hear. I heard that PS3 trade ins had doubled and half were trading for 360s. As someone who doesn't use online gaming I just thought, what?
The trade ins are very expected, there a ton of people that cant live without CoD or some damn online shooter. Good for us as it weeds them out, now when we have a shooter it will be a bunch of people that arent that great at shooters playing, perfect for me. 
I mentioned this earlier, but after reading Sony's letter to it's publishers I'm confident that Sony will pretty much conduct their conference business as usual. If there's any apology it'll be brief and something along the lines of, "we apologize for the outage, but it's made way for something EVEN BETTER!" And then they'll go back to touting their superiority and take shots at Nintendo and Microsoft in the process. It's going to be ugly.
And at some point there will be booing in the crowd. I have no doubt of this.
robio said:I mentioned this earlier, but after reading Sony's letter to it's publishers I'm confident that Sony will pretty much conduct their conference business as usual. If there's any apology it'll be brief and something along the lines of, "we apologize for the outage, but it's made way for something EVEN BETTER!" And then they'll go back to touting their superiority and take shots at Nintendo and Microsoft in the process. It's going to be ugly.
And at some point there will be booing in the crowd. I have no doubt of this.
That would be amazing as well.
- Get PSN up before E3
- Business as usual
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobileWe all want our PSN, hurry please Sony..
Dont worry I fly out again tomorrow so there is a good chance it comes back up.
Giant Bomb was speculating about it on their most recent podcast. They were basically marvelling at what on earth Sony will do in the face of the hostility that will be directed toward them over the PSN outage.
Someone suggested they make a joke about it -- it's beyond that, and being that they are a publically traded company, I don't think yutzing about losing billions of doallars would be appreciated by their shareholders. Also, since the deep bow business, I don't think that's the tone at Sony right now.
Which leads into what I think they should do:
Have Kaz come on stage, with nothing but a large screen behind him and have him bow, and then say in in Japanese (with no translator, only his words appearing in english and french in the screen behind him.
"We are profoundly sorry for failing our customers. This is not the time for celebrating our products, we will let them speak for themseleves on the showroom floor. Thank You."
And then leave the stage, bring up the lights. They can do all the marketing at the pre-meetings and on the floor (and in hotel conference rooms).
What do you think they should do?